The addition of allows organizations to automate management of NetApp storage pools

NetApp has contributed Data ONTAP 8 Clustering drivers to OpenStack, giving service providers and enterprises better resources when building private and public clouds based on the platform, it said on Monday.

The addition of drivers for Data ONTAP 8 Clustering to OpenStack Folsom, the latest version of the open source cloud platform, allows organizations to automate management of NetApp storage pools, or clusters, and to scale the cloud infrastructure. That will in turn allow enterprises to increase storage efficiency and reduce disk and power needs, the company said.

OpenStack Folsom, which became generally available last month, allows IT staff to automate the creation of pools of compute, storage, and networking resources, which is a good fit with its own additions, according to NetApp.

NetApp will demo the new capabilities at the OpenStack Summit, which takes place this week in San Diego. The company will also showcase proposed enhancements that provide NAS support as well as cloning for more efficient provisioning of boot volumes, it said.

NetApp isn't the only company showing a growing interest in OpenStack. This week, Cisco Systems rolled out a free distribution of the open source cloud management platform.

While the interest around OpenStack grows, there is also a need for CIOs to approach the platform with caution.

For example, enterprises shouldn't assume that "open source" equates to open standards, broad interoperability and freedom from commercial interests.

In reality, OpenStack is dominated by vendor interests, where they want customers to adopt their own offerings, potentially to include proprietary lock-in, Gartner wrote in September report named "Don't Let OpenStack Hype Distort Your Selection of a Cloud Management Platform in 2012."